All-seeing eyes in the sky

Share via

They come in every size: some as large as passenger planes, others as tiny as
hummingbirds. And the tasks for which they are used are rapidly multiplying
from the simple surveillance of terror suspects to their targeted killing —
and now as an extra eye for a police Swat team preparing to storm a farm.

The United States, which pioneered them, uses drones in a dozen countries,
mostly under the purview of the Central Intelligence Agency for its
ethically and legally debatable programme of targeted killings of suspected
al-Qaeda operatives. More than 40 per cent of American military aircraft are
unmanned